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The Nuclear Ups and Downs of 2011

By Matthew L. Wald February 29, 2012 1:11 pmFebruary 29, 2012 1:11 pm

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission spotted a few problems at American reactors last year and directed plant owners to fix them before they could cause accidents, but it also let a lot of problems slide and failed to follow up when there were indications of deeper troubles. That’s the conclusion of a review of nuclear plant safety in 2011 by David Lochbaum, an expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that is generally critical of the industry.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Mr. Lochbaum also wrote that some plants do not meet the commission’s standards for fires and earthquakes. The agency has granted some plants exemptions from some fire requirements, giving them alternate ways of complying although it recently ordered all plants to re-evaluate their earthquake preparedness.

The commission said it was reviewing the report but pointed out that it was mostly a summary of information published by the agency. “There is nothing new in this report,’’ said David McIntyre, a commission spokesman.

Mr. Lochbaum, who once worked for the commission as an instructor helping to train inspectors, is one of the most technically sophisticated public critics of nuclear power. Among the positives he outlined for 2011:

After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, Duke Power, which operates a similar type of reactors, installed extra equipment in the containment buildings at its Oconee plants in Greenville, S.C. But in an accident, the temperature inside the containment buildings could get hot enough to shut down the electrical components of the emergency system, the report noted. The commission found the deficiency and ordered it corrected before it caused a problem.

At the LaSalle plant, southwest of Chicago, plant operators regularly kept a storage tank three-quarters full. But commission inspectors noted that the earthquake analysis for the plant assumed that the tank was empty; if it had water in it and was heavier, it might collapse in an earthquake. Again, a commission analysis identified the shortcoming before it caused a problem.

Among the negatives:

At the Millstone 2 plant in Waterford, Conn., control room operators made errors while running a test, causing the reactor’s power level to increase rapidly.

During a periodic test of the fire sprinkler system at the Monticello plant near Minneapolis, rust blocked the flow of water past a valve. “The plant owner
had not properly evaluated numerous warnings about corrosion inside fire protection,” the report said.

None of the missteps resulted in any injuries or a release of radiation. But Mr. Lochbaum said that human error played a significant role and that the commission’s safety philosophy relies on operators to do the right thing in an emergency. “If the operators cannot walk and chew gum, what confidence is there they can be expected to run and juggle?’’ he said in an interview.

The list of problems is something like a Rorschach inkblot test in that its significance is in the eye of the beholder. Mr. Lochbaum characterized the incidents as “near misses.”

But Mr. McIntyre of the commission said, “The N.R.C.’s oversight program is designed to catch and correct problems well before they become anything approaching a ‘near miss.’ “

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